


Minutemen

by perculious



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Angst, Deathfic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-02
Updated: 2010-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 16:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perculious/pseuds/perculious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There were a few years between the two events, but they were always linked in Byron's mind. Bill died, and the Minutemen ended."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Minutemen

It didn't help that when Bill died, the Minutemen fell apart.

There were a few years between the two events, but they were always linked in Byron's mind. Bill died, and the Minutemen ended.

They'd known it would happen someday, of course, and no one had been naive enough to make the Minutemen their whole life. They all had something to fall back on. Hollis had his old police school friends and his cars. Sally had her agent. Hooded Justice and Nelson both made vague, nonspecific references to other jobs and skills. And of course Byron hadn't been stupid enough to think he could be Mothman forever, either.

Except that his backup plan had always been Bill.

*

Hollis checked up on him sometimes.

He hadn't known, of course. They'd never bothered to tell anyone, just because it seemed like an unnecessary complication. Anyway, they would have seemed like an afterthought next to the highly visible, highly tumultuous slow-motion trainwreck that was Nelly and HJ.

"No one would care about what we're doing, kid, I promise," Bill had said once when they'd stayed behind together, tracing a finger absent-mindedly up Byron's neck and across his jawline. "They'd just yawn and go back to fighting crime."

But everyone knew they were close. So Hollis appeared at his door once every few months, bright-eyed and earnest and always carrying that goddamn photograph in his wallet, as if Byron ever wanted to look at that again.

He'd pretend he was just coming to visit a friend, although Bill had known Hollis much better than Byron did.

"How have you been?" Hollis would say, like it was a casual question, and Byron would say "Fine" and stare at him to see if he dared to question that. He never did. He'd always say "Well, that's great!" and follow it up with something like "I guess it's the thing now to start drinking early, isn't it? I can never keep up with fads like that."

It made it worse to have Hollis there, if Byron was being honest. He was okay if he was by himself, in his own space that he could fill with thoughts that were not about Bill. But Hollis just sat there looking at him, eyes soft with concern, and it made him feel raw, like it had just happened yesterday. Byron hated it; he always wanted to somehow show Hollis that he was alright, get Hollis to grant him a clean bill of health, so he would go away and stop coming back. The words "Dollar Bill" were never once mentioned between them.

*

Bill had never really cared about the hero stuff, not like some of them did. He wasn't in it for that, he'd told Byron one night, stretched out lazily on Byron's bed while Byron was making adjustments to his costume. It had been a way out of Kansas, a way to fame and fortune and security in life. And to keep the job, he had to stop robberies.

He didn't care about the politics stuff, either. When Byron got into heated arguments with Nelson, he would go to Bill's room afterward and rage about how much Nelly didn't understand. It was all very well, he'd insist, to go around in a costume, but sooner or later you had to think about what would actually help people, and if that meant socialism then it meant socialism. Bill would wait calmly until Byron was finished. Byron would take a deep breath and flush red and apologize for boring him, but Bill would just say it wasn't boring and go to take Byron's wings off. Bill always complained about the wings.

He got annoyed if he couldn't get close to Byron because of the things. He claimed the wings always blocked him in pictures, and made Byron stand behind him. He thought they were unwieldy and unnecessary. Taking them off meant that he wanted to be nearby; sometimes for sex, sometimes for sitting and talking, and sometimes just to put his big hands on Byron's hips and his cheek against Byron's hood, which he did every so often, so suddenly and quietly that Byron hardly noticed he was doing it until he could feel Bill's warm body against his. Bill's head fit right between his antennae.

Every once in a while, Bill let him keep the wings on, and spent the night lying on top of Byron, stroking the wings with a finger and biting down on Byron's shoulders right where they were attached. Byron would shiver and wish to God he was a real mothman, if only to properly feel Bill's hot breath on his filaments.

*

He could have been alright, he thought, if it weren't for the way Bill died.

It would have been hard no matter what. Of course it would have been hard. But it wasn't like he hadn't known people who'd died before.

When Silhouette was killed, it had been horrible. Bill had gone all gray and angry, and shouted at Byron when Byron asked if there was anything he could do. They'd spent the night together in grim silence, Bill's hands shaking as they gripped Byron's wrists, Byron wanting more than anything to talk to him but unable to put into words how scared he was that it could have been them and how sick he felt to be thinking about himself when Ursula was dead.

But Byron had gotten through that, and he could have gotten through this. Except that Bill didn't have to die. If it had been some sort of disease, or a freak accident, or lightning strike, or a plane crash, maybe Byron could have accepted it. But he was shot, and somehow it felt like if Byron ever got over it, if he ever started to be okay with the fact that Bill was gone, it would mean he had forgiven those criminals. And that thought made anger rise up viciously inside him so quickly he had to drink half a bottle of scotch to dampen it.

It came back to him in flashes. He remembered hearing Bill's name on the news over and over again, Dollar Bill, costumed adventurer. He remembered the revolving door covered in police tape. A limp body wrapped in a red cape. Sally had cried. Bill had always liked Sally; she flirted with Byron sometimes, in the way she did with everyone, and Bill would always laugh and say "Stop it, look, you're making him blush." Which just made it worse. Byron would cut him a look and later Bill would draw him close and kiss the corner of his mouth and say Sally should be so lucky.

Hollis had wept openly. Nelly had been a presence at the back of Byron's vision, quietly hovering near HJ. The Comedian had just lit a cigar and laughed, which made Hollis go very tense and cold but Byron thought he sort of understood.

It was five months before Byron himself cried the first time, at three AM when he'd been drinking since seven and he found a crumpled dollar bill between his sofa cushions.

*

When Byron had been living without Bill for eight years, Nelson showed up outside his door looking hollowed out. Byron let him in.

It seemed like Nelly was more of a wreck than Byron was, and it made him feel like he had no right to feel so sorry for himself all the time. Nelly talked about HJ constantly, the things he said and did. It made Byron uncomfortable, because he wondered if that was how he should be about Bill. He didn't want to talk about Bill, or even think about him, and the more Nelly wanted to talk about the old times, the more Byron preferred to stay drunk. It was just easier.

He didn't know if Nelly really knew about him and Bill or if he just thought Byron had lost a friend, but Nelly seemed to think that it was enough that Byron was hurt. He thought of them as companions in mourning. Byron wasn't in mourning, exactly, unless that meant pushing the subject to the very corner of your mind and trying to drink enough to drown it. Acknowledging that Bill was gone meant moving forward, and moving forward meant thinking Bill's death was something he could move forward from. It would be like a betrayal.

But Nelly didn't see it that way, and it annoyed Byron. It annoyed him that Nelly could say "I loved him, and I miss him," and Byron got panicky when he heard the word "cloak".

He and Bill had talked about Nelly and HJ. Everyone had known since the first meeting of the Minutemen, with them shooting looks at each other across the room. Back when Bill was just Byron's friend, Byron had gone to him with his concerns the first time Nelly showed up to a meeting with bruises he was obviously trying to hide. Bill had just laughed and ruffled his hair.

"I don't think it's like that, buddy," he said. "You don't sleep with a guy who wears a noose around his neck unless you're looking for that kind of thing."

"What kind of thing?" Byron had asked, but Bill hadn't said any more, just chuckled to himself. Byron hadn't really understood until Sally got drunk at Christmas and told him all about it, loudly. Byron had never particularly liked Nelson, and after that he always felt uneasy around him.

Still, with Nelly there all the time, at least Hollis stopped visiting.

*

The problem with remembering was that there was only a limited number of memories. Eventually, he would run out.

The closest Bill had ever come to saying he loved him was the morning after that awful night when Ursula died. Byron had gotten dressed in his straps and wings, and Bill had grabbed his wrist and said in a rough voice, "Hey kid, you know I'll never let anything happen to you, right?"

Byron had just nodded silently.


End file.
